Here's a good way to start a noisy debate among local food lovers: Ask for opinions on where to get the best bagel in Louisville. Want to kick it up another notch? Ask where you can even get a bialy hereabouts.
What’s a bialy? See what I mean? A lot of us have so little exposure to this rarely seen cousin to the bagel that we’re not even sure what it is.
More about that shortly. First, though, let’s put our hands together and welcome our town’s latest bagel shop: Born2Bagel, which opened last autumn in a Middletown shopping-strip storefront at the corner of Shelbyville Road and Blankenbaker Parkway.
The eatery’s claim to authenticity comes naturally through owner Bruce Rosenblatt, who told Food & Dining magazine that he grew up in Long Island enjoying bagels and lox and all the schmears every Saturday, and grew into a career in corporate restaurant management.
After he and his wife Jennifer moved to Louisville in 2014, he said they found the region lacking in “a true New York bagel experience.” That crave and his business experience, marked a straight line to Born2Bagel’s opening at the end of last September.
Declaring its products “authentic New York-style bagels,” the company’s website expresses its dedication to authenticity as “the cornerstone of our business. We handcraft our bagels using traditional New York-style techniques, creating that perfect balance of a crisp exterior and a soft, chewy interior.”
The restaurant, its menus and decor and the look of the website are all bright and professional, in striking colors of gold, black, and white. This gives the place the professional look of a corporate chain, but credit that to the Rosenblatts’ business experience, not bean counters at a distant corporate headquarters.
The space, which formerly housed a quick-service Chinese restaurant, is full of counter space and a few tables for dining in, with bagel production apparently taking place out of sight.
The menu focuses on bagels, of course, including 16 styles of bagel ($2.29 each a la carte, $12.99 for six, and $23.99 for 13, a baker’s dozen) and seven flavors of cream cheese, adding $1.90 as a generous schmear. Oversize bagel-based breakfasts with meat and potato pancakes are $11.99 and $13.99, and a variety of lunch sandwiches on bagel are $10.79). Strong, delicious coffee (from Louisville’s Fante’s Coffee, according to a Facebook post) comes in your choice of medium Mexican roast or strong Colombian roast and can be yours for $3.16 small, and $4.49 for large.
We went with bagel-shop classics for a hearty Saturday brunch, and started with an oversize open-face Bruce’s Bagel, a $14.29 nova lox- or whitefish-topped treat so huge that it would be difficult or impossible to eat out of hand.
A large, fat, split poppyseed bagel stretched across a lightweight paper plate, thickly spread with cream cheese and draped with several thick slices of creamy, smooth lox. Atop that perched thick slices of firm, red winter tomato, sliced red onion, and four or five thick diagonal slices of crisp cucumber, a grind of black pepper, and, available upon request, a scattering of salty capers.
It took a while to disassemble and eat it all with knife and fork, but it was well worth the effort. All the ingredients were fresh and tasty, and they made a wonderfully satisfying meal.
Even that large bagel was a bit lost amid all those culinary riches, but a simpler classic—an onion bagel generously spread with plain cream cheese ($4.19) — showed off the quality of Born2Bagel’s wares with less flavor competition. As a proper New York bagel should be, it boasted a firm, browned crust, crisp to the bite, with a lighter but still chewy interior.
Listed as potato pancakes rather than latkes ($3 as a side with a bagel sandwich), Born2Bagel’s rendition was perfect. Two good-size rounds of sizzling, onion-scented shredded potatoes within a crunchy, crispy dark brown fried interior went down fast, with tangy sour cream (or optional applesauce) alongside.
So what’s a bialy, anyway? I didn’t see them on the menu, but they’re usually available along with bagels for the same $2.29 price. It’s a similar bread in the Jewish tradition, but made with a dent in the middle to hold toppings rather than the bagel’s traditional hole. It’s cooked without the pre-boil that’s customary for traditional bagels. The result is similar to a bagel but with a softer crust and perhaps even more chewy.
“It’s like an English muffin married a bagel with onion bits baked inside and on top,” according to a December 23 post on Born2Bagel’s Facebook page. “Oh, so good!”
Our meal for two came to $26.12 plus a $6.53 tip. An additional takeout order of a plain and a chocolate-chip bagel and a bialy was $7.28.
Noise Level: The small shop can get noisy when it’s crowded, with customers at the counter crowding the row of tables along the opposite wall. Conversation is possible at an average 67.0dB sound level, but less so during occasional peaks at a thunderous 87,0db.
Accessibility: The restaurant space appears accessible to wheelchair users, but the entrance door is heavy, and the nearest curb ramp is several shops away from the entrance.
